“He’s out cold,” exclaimed an incredulous Brian Ritchie as the rest of his snowshoe team doubled back to where Mike Treacy had fallen.
“Is he breathing?” someone asked.
“Ya, but I can’t wake him up,” Ritchie replied. “We’d better get help right away.”
An hour earlier that wouldn’t have been so easy. Then they were still plodding up the Red River through the Netley marsh miles from anywhere. Since then they had passed the mouth of Netley Creek and were just beyond the boarded-up cottages at Breezy Point. It was dark now but they had re-entered civilization – roads, farms, and people.
The lights they could see flickering in the distance were less than half a mile away. To get help all they had to do was strike off along the road running beside them and eventually, they would come to a farmhouse. Two members of the team immediately set off, leaving the rest to figure out how to get Treacy out to the road.
Treacy’s collapse caught everyone by surprise. They were on a routine training run for the 50-mile senior snowshoe race. The seven members of Ritchie’s team had left from Matlock on Lake Winnipeg just after lunch. It had been a typical sunny winter’s day and several team members were walking with their parkas open. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits.
Treacy had kept to himself a bit more than usual but that was no cause for concern. He had been the captain of the winning intermediate team the year before so he was not someone expected to have any serious problem. Six feet tall, he was all muscle, no doubt partly due to a steady diet of barn-crew duty. He was a year older than his brother Pat but because he had failed a grade in elementary school they were in the same grade at St. John’s. He had an earthy sense of humor and loved an excuse to use his pet pun “Bare ass me again.”
Fifty miles is as much a psychological barrier as a physical one. It’s probably the biggest challenge a St. John’s student has to face. You can’t cheat to get through it, nor can anyone else help you, apart from a friendly kick in the backside.
It’s an achievement that makes the St. John’s graduate different from most others. The minute you cross the finish line there is a sense that no other challenge in life is beyond your grasp. You have done the impossible.
I remember hearing once that the distance had been chosen quite arbitrarily and no one even knew if it was possible for teenagers to snowshoe that far. Fifty miles was simply a distance that sounded further than anyone would ever dream of walking in the winter. It was meant to undermine your self-confidence even before you took the first step.
If the students had doubts about being able to go that far so, too, did the masters. For two years, 1961 and 1962, the school ran the race over two days. But then in the first year of the full-time school it was decided to make it a one-day race.
I was in Grade 7 that year but I remember the horror stories. The snowshoe program always began after Christmas but that year due to a lack of snow we didn’t actually snowshoe until the third week. Walking those distances in moccasins was no picnic but the real problems didn’t begin for the seniors until actual snowshoeing began.
First, it was injuries, then illnesses, then finally, as my January 27 letter home recounts, runaways. In a single week, three members of one team went AWOL while a couple of other seniors were sick in the infirmary. A week later, two runaways had returned but now another member had skipped out, never to return.
The 50-mile practice, held a week before the late February race, took one team 21 hours to complete because they got lost in the Netley Marsh and walked an extra five miles. One of the more disgruntled survivors drew attention in a self-drawn cartoon to the fact St. John’s boys were being asked to complete the same distance proposed for an experimental US Marine endurance test. The cartoon depicted a crippled, half-dead snowshoer and bore the caption “Don’t Come Here! Join the Marines!”
The masters enjoyed the humor and ignored its mildly rebellious overtones. On race day Bob Davies, the captain of one of the two teams competing, became sick and had to be ordered out of the competition. His team was disqualified, handing victory to Duff McFadden’s team.
In my first year as a senior, the fear of failure nagged at me from the moment I arrived back after Christmas. When I wasn’t worrying about the distance, I was worrying about the pace. The Grade 11 and 12 boys all seemed to have reached adult size. I was in Grade 10 and still growing.
As my first letter home after Christmas reveals I got off to a bad start. The first week we snowshoed en masse to Lockport via the power lines, a standard intermediate run, and I arrived back at the school with lamp wick burns across the top of both feet. The skin had been rubbed raw. Despite being a three-year veteran I had managed to forget the fundamentals of tying snowshoes so they don’t chafe your feet. Warm-water soaking and careful bandaging helped prepare my feet for the next practice but not the rest of my body which seemed gripped by perpetual fatigue.
Daytime temperatures in January typically hovered in the -20 C range. Before we had school-issued parkas, mitts, and footgear I remember John Robertson freezing his ears so badly they were swollen like balloons for several days afterward. He had been wearing his father’s World War II leather bomber pilot helmet.
By the time I was a senior the equipment had improved greatly but there were still incidents of frostbite. Classmate David Cooper froze his foot and with help from Mr. Wiens had to drain the fluid from the inflammation two or three times daily for over a week before it began to heal. He missed several practices. Another classmate, Terry Baptiste, froze his hands so badly one afternoon he was forced to thrust them in the snow to restore feeling before trying to warm them in a nearby farmhouse. His parka had been too short in the arms. He never fully recovered and 20 years later he said still gets a sharp ache with the slightest drop in temperature.
Prior to the second practice that year the teams were picked and I ended up on Rob Wallace’s team along with Doug Leonard, Stephen Gold, Bob Ives, and Doug Christie. My feet got no worse during the next practice but my lack of energy was now aggravated by poor sleeping and daytime headaches. I began to wonder if I had something wrong with me.
Throughout the snowshoe season, Mr. Wiens would give pep talks, sometimes during morning chapel, but more usually at the end of lunch on Wednesday afternoon. I remember two themes in particular, don’t be a quitter and don’t give in to psychosomatic illnesses.
The latter talk would usually come the week an unusually large number of boys were reporting sick. Psychosomatic was one of those seemingly incomprehensible big words used by medical people that I came to understand from an early age, thanks to Mr. Wiens.
The talk was primarily for the benefit of those who had a habit of faking sickness. He was playing psychiatrist, providing group therapy to the student body. He pointed out that it is possible to become physically ill as a result of mental or psychological trauma. In other words, sickness can sometimes be in our heads.
I’m not sure if it was due to a request from my mother but one day I was told I had an appointment with the school doctor, Dr, Reid, about my fatigue. I reported the outcome of the visit in a letter on Jan. 23.
`As you expected I did go in for a check-up last week. The doctor thought of giving me vitamin pills but said it would only make me grow faster which perhaps wasn’t the right thing.’
Nothing further was said in the letter about the doctor’s treatment however I did point to another possible cause when I added,
‘I guess another thing that doesn’t seem to help is the old routine, especially in the winter at the school. You never feel as though you can ever get on top. There’s always a feeling of being sort of underwater if you can imagine it!’
Mr. Wiens’s pep talks were obviously having an effect.
The run that had given me trouble a week earlier was the same one during which Treacy collapsed. The distance was no greater than a regular run, but because there was no store break it required a major mental adjustment. It had the effect of making the 25 miles seem much further.
Treacy had said he was okay during a brief rest in the shelter of a cottage at Breezy Point. But everybody could tell he was struggling. Those who noticed it had been alerted to the fact he was sweating even though the temperature had already dropped 10 degrees. But they hadn’t been concerned because he had his coat buttoned and his hood up. He’d also eaten a candy so they concluded it was perhaps just a passing discomfort.
Almost as soon as the team set off Treacy began to fall behind, prompting the captain to stop everyone and take a position at the rear.
“Come on, Treacy,” he urged when he saw that Treacy still could not keep the pace. “It’s only seven miles to the school.”
Treacy said nothing though occasionally he’d stumble when one snowshoe caught in the webbing of the other. To begin with, Ritchie walked alongside, arm outstretched behind Treacy’s back. Still, the distance behind the rest of the team kept growing.
As a last resort, Ritchie halted everyone and wrapped a school scarf around Treacy’s waist and began to pull from the front. It was tricky keeping it taut and not causing Treacy to stumble. Ritchie was beginning to wonder if he’d ever get him home when his load suddenly became a dead weight. He looked back and Treacy was face down in the snow.
As he yelled frantically at the team to stop Ritchie struggled to turn his stricken man over. He was unconscious but he could feel him breathing. He also could tell Treacy was badly overheating. His scarf, toque, and hood were soaked with sweat.
After sending two members ahead to call for help, Ritchie renewed his efforts to revive the fallen teammate.
“Quit playing around, Treacy,” Ritchie chided as he shook him by the shoulder.
Others talked it up hoping the ruckus might cause him to snap out of it. Just as they were about to give up he moved. Little by little, he was coaxed first to his knees, and then up on his feet.
“Can you walk if we support you?” Ritchie asked. “It’s only out to the road where there should be a school car waiting.”
Treacy nodded. Step by step he staggered across the jagged surface of the snow-covered ice supported by two teammates. When he stumbled so did they. Gradually the trees along the shore became more distinct. Those not directly supporting Treacy either pushed from behind or pulled from in front. Twice Treacy fell.
“Pick up your feet,” barked Ritchie, his concern now turning to irritation. Treacy seemed to respond to the reprimand. They reached the bank and could now see vehicle lights moving slowly across their path just ahead.
“That’s probably the school panel truck,” one team member called out. “Look, he keeps stopping.”
Even Treacy seemed to be encouraged. In no time they were pushing through the last clump of bush and were on the road. The vehicle had stopped not far off. Moments later they were beside the vehicle.
“Is he all right?” asked the driver as he got out. It was Mr. Wiens.
“He seems a bit better but I don’t know,” replied Ritchie.
“Well, help him into the truck and I’ll drive him back to the school,” continued Mr. Wiens. “The rest of you continue on foot.”
“But, Sir,” protested one member. “We’re a team. He’ll need help back at the school.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Mr. Wiens replied coldly.
Treacy was asleep and his temperature had returned to near-normal by the time his teammates reached the school. And two days later he was out of the infirmary, apparently fully recovered.
Pressure was the only word of explanation offered but those of us training for the senior race knew it wasn’t from schoolwork. Ahead lay something frighteningly large. Failure would be far more devastating than flunking an exam. Pressure was the right word but it was mostly social.
We had a slow man that year but he always kept going and would usually regain his speed by the end of a run. Sometimes we took turns pulling him along.
For the last practice in January, we snowshoed 28 miles to Alphie Philpott’s, a bachelor farmer who lived near Petersfield. The following week we did the same distance without a break, traveling up the river from Brokenhead to the school. The following week a blizzard hit and our captain opted to take a shorter run to Lockport and back. And then it was the week for the 50-mile practice.
My memories of that day, especially the morning, remain the highlight of my years at St. John’s. We left the school in darkness but soon a pink glow appeared on the eastern horizon. We were witnessing the dawn of a cold winter day. It was hard not to be overcome by the raw beauty. An hour later the sun felt almost warm as we entered the shelter of the spruce hills east of the river, the silence broken only by the rhythmic swish of our snowshoes on the snow. We were on our way to Dencross.
As my letter on February 21st describes I arrived back at the school late that evening feeling the ‘best I’d ever felt’ after a long day of snowshoeing. A huge, huge load had been lifted from my shoulders.
Treacy also had no trouble with the 50-mile practice but for some reason was beaten by the race. During a rest stop at Netley Creek, he again collapsed unconscious. Efforts to revive him failed and he was taken to the school. Though disqualified his teammates kept going.
He rejoined them after lunch and completed the race without difficulty. It was important they finished the season as a team.